Tag Archives: marmalade

It’s wild, wet and windy out there. The sun, when we see it, barely reaches the north-facing fields even at midday. If I were a bear, I would find a warm cave and take a nap. Nothing grows in the first two weeks of January, but the stunt doesn’t last long. By the end of the month, kales, leeks and cabbages will begin to grow again as the days start to draw out and the noon sun starts to climb. On our French farm, just 200 miles south, we’ll be planting lettuces before the end of the month. I can’t explain it, but even growers in areas like southern California, where their winter is similar to our summer, avoid sowing in early January. A druid might put it down the need for solar rebirth; a bear might take it as a chance for a nap.

I once got berated as a heartless bully by a number of you for being unforgiving about the repeated failures, and consequent lack of quality, of one of our cauliflower growers (Mr M for those who remember). I ate humble pie, apologised, and we went on buying his caulis, but it made no difference in the end; he continued to hope for the best rather than weed his crop, and went bust soon after. It might have been kinder to be harder sooner; it is a hard judgement to know when to stop working with a grower. Riverford is extraordinary within our industry for the long-term relationships we have with suppliers. It’s something I feel very proud of and hope survives me, but sometimes the farm or the farmer is wrong for the crop and no amount of ethics or support will change the inevitable outcome; it just prolongs the agony and undermines other growers. If you were one of the 20% of customers who had to trim small, spotty Brussels sprouts this year, I am sorry; it was the third year of poor sprouts from this grower, but we won’t give up on him quite yet.

On a lighter note, to mark two more successful long-term relationships, the first blood oranges from Sicily and Sevilles from Ave Maria Farm in Mairena del Alcor have arrived and are as excellent as in previous years. Now is the time to make marmalade. You can even cook alongside me on our YouTube channel if you need a little guidance.

A calming January marmalade-making session is a good antidote to the mayhem of Christmas and New Year. Put the radio on, get peeling, slicing and simmering, and fill your house with the distinctive bittersweet aroma.

We buy our Seville oranges from Ave Maria Farm in Mairena del Alcor near Seville, which is run by Amadora and her two daughters. They produce wonderfully gnarly, knobbly, thick-skinned fruit with the incredible aroma and unusually high pectin content that make Seville oranges so valued. There have been orange groves on their 60-hectare farm since 1867 and they were the first orange farm to be awarded organic status in Andalucia. Riverford founder Guy Watson visited them in 2011 and was hugely impressed by the crops and wildlife on the farm, not to mention the energy and orange-devotion of Amadora and her family!

Seville Orange Marmalade Recipe
Our own much-loved recipe. You could substitute in a few of our glorious blood oranges to get a rich, caramel-coloured preserve, or use our incredibly perfumed bergamot lemons to really crank up the aromatics.

Watch Guy make it (and learn from his mistakes!) in this video:

Guy’s tips:• Make sure the pan is big enough – if it’s too full, it will boil over, and all that sugar will be a nightmare to clean off your cooker• When you are dissolving the sugar, don’t heat it too vigorously as it will catch on the bottom and you will end up with burnt marmalade – not tasty.• Don’t boil it too for long; if you go past the setting point you will end up with jars of concrete!• Skim off any scum before potting up to get a clearer set.• Let the marmalade stand for 15 mins before jarring – this will stop the fruit from settling at the bottom of the jar.

1. With a sharp knife, peel the skin from the oranges and lemons, leaving as much white pith on the fruit as possible. Chop the peel into 3mm strips and put in a large pan.2. Line a large bowl with a piece of muslin, leaving plenty to overhang the sides of the bowl. Cut the oranges and lemons in half. With your hands, squeeze the juice from the fruit over the bowl, dropping the leftover squeezed fruit (pith, pips and flesh) into the muslin.3. Lift the muslin out of the bowl, gather the sides and squeeze any remaining juice into the bowl. Tie the muslin together with string to keep the fruit in and form a bag.4. Place the muslin bag in the saucepan with the peel. Add the squeezed fruit juice and 2.5 litres cold water to the pan.5. Heat until boiling, then reduce the heat and simmer for 2 hours, until the peel is tender. Put a few saucers in the fridge to chill.6. Remove the muslin bag and squeeze all the sticky juice from the bag into the pan. An easy way to do this is to put the bag in a colander and use a spoon to press it out.7. Measure the contents of the pan in a jug (include the shreds and liquid). Return to the pan and add 450g sugar for every 500ml liquid.8. Gently heat for 15 minutes, until the sugar crystals have dissolved. Increase the heat and boil rapidly for 15 minutes.9. If you have a sugar thermometer, the setting point for marmalade is 105°C. To check the set without one, put 1 tsp on a cold saucer and push it with the back of a spoon. If it wrinkles, you have reached setting point. If it doesn’t, keep boiling and re-test every 5 mins. Turn off the heat as soon as you reach setting point.10. Skim any scum from the surface. Leave the mixture to stand for 15 minutes. Stir gently, then carefully spoon into warmed sterilised jars (use a jam funnel if you have one). If using screw top lids, put the lids on while the marmalade is still hot and turn upside down for 5 minutes to sterilise the lids (or boil the lids for a few minutes and leave to dry before use). If using cellophane, put a wax disc on the marmalade while warm, then seal with cellophane and an elastic band.

Marmalade making is even easier with a Riverford marmalade kit. Seville oranges, lemons, and our recipe included – just add your own sugar and jars.

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A calming January marmalade-making session is a good antidote to the mayhem of Christmas and New Year. Put the radio on, get peeling, slicing and simmering, and fill your house with the distinctive bittersweet aroma.

We buy our Seville oranges from Ave Maria Farm in Mairena del Alcor near Seville, which is run by Amadora and her two daughters. They produce wonderfully gnarly, knobbly, thick-skinned fruit with the incredible aroma and unusually high pectin content that make them so valued. There have been orange groves on their 60 hectare farm since 1867 and they were the first orange farm to be awarded organic status in Andalucia. Riverford founder Guy Watson visited them in 2011 and was hugely impressed by the crops and wildlife on the farm, not to mention the energy and orange-devotion of Amadora and her family!

Seville Orange Marmalade RecipeWe’ve won awards for our marmalade, which is made to this recipe. You could substitute in a few of our glorious blood oranges to get a rich, caramel-coloured preserve or use our incredibly perfumed bergamot lemons to really crank up the aromatics.

Guy’s tips:

Make sure the pan is big enough – if it is too full it will boil over and all that sugar will be a nightmare to clean off your cooker

When you are dissolving the sugar, don’t heat it too vigorously as it will catch on the bottom and you will end up with burnt marmalade – not tasty.

Don’t boil it too for long; if you go past the setting point you will end up with jars of concrete!

Skim off any scum before potting up to get a clearer set.

Let the marmalade stand for 15 mins before jarring – this will stop the fruit from settling at the bottom of the jar.

With a sharp knife, peel the skin from the oranges and lemons, leaving as much white pith on the fruit as possible. Chop the peel into 3mm strips and put in a large pan.

Line a large bowl with a piece of muslin, leaving plenty to overhang the sides of the bowl. Cut the oranges and lemons in half. With your hands, squeeze the juice from the fruit over the bowl, dropping the leftover squeezed fruit (pith, pips and flesh) into the muslin.

Lift the muslin out of the bowl, gather the sides and squeeze any remaining juice into the bowl. Tie the muslin together with string to keep the fruit in and form a bag.

Place the muslin bag in the saucepan with the peel. Add the squeezed fruit juice and 2.5 litres cold water to the pan.

Heat until boiling, then reduce the heat and simmer for 2 hours, until the peel is tender. Put a few saucers in the fridge to chill.

Remove the muslin bag and squeeze all the sticky juice from the bag into the pan. (An easy way to do this is to put the bag in a colander and use a spoon to press it out).

Measure the contents of the pan in a jug (include the shreds and liquid). Return to the pan and add 450g sugar for every 500ml liquid.

Gently heat for 15 minutes, until the sugar crystals have dissolved. Increase the heat and boil rapidly for 15 minutes.

Test that the marmalade has reached setting point by putting a teaspoon of the liquid on a cold saucer and gently pushing with the back of the spoon. If the liquid starts to wrinkle, setting point has been reached. If no wrinkling happens, keep boiling and re-test every 10 minutes. Turn off the heat as soon as you reach setting point.

Skim any scum from the surface. Leave the mixture to stand for 15 minutes. Stir gently, then carefully spoon into warmed sterilised jars (use a jam funnel if you have one). If using screw top lids, put the lids on while the marmalade is still hot and turn upside down for 5 minutes to sterilise the lids (or boil the lids for a few minutes and leave to dry before use). If using cellophane, put a wax disc on the marmalade while warm, then seal with cellophane and an elastic band.

For Anna Colquhoun, Riverford’s Preserving Guru, January and February mean one thing in her kitchen. Citrus.

Kilos arrive from Riverford, all lugged in crates by local driver Richard who always smiles and never grumbles. The Seville oranges, blood oranges, lemons and clementines are fantastic – bright, ripe, full of juice and flavour and of course unwaxed.

They are some of my favourite things to preserve, as their colours stay true in the jar – a citrus rainbow of red, orange and yellow – and the boiling vats perfume the whole house.

In my classes coming up in Feb we will make marmalade, spiced pickled oranges, blood orange and port jelly, clementine jam and Moroccan preserved lemons.

Preserved lemons are ‘lactofermented’, like some of the world’s other best foods – sourdough bread, yoghurt, chocolate and kimchi, to name a few. Friendly bacteria enjoy the salty conditions, multiply, squeeze out any unwanted micro-organisms and produce lactic acid and carbon dioxide. The former gives the lemons their distinctive texture, flavour and aroma, and the latter displaces the air in the jar. The clever clip-top preserving jars let excess gas escape, so they don’t explode. The bacteria like pure fine salt, that is to say not contaminated with those mysterious ‘anti-caking agents’. Find it in wholefood and heathfood shops, or buy one of those expensive flaky sea salts and grind it in a mortar or processor.

Fermentation takes around a month at warm room temperature. Make sure the lemons stay submerged in the salty juice. You might notice the jar fizz or sputter – good signs it’s working. After fermentation keep the jar somewhere cool and dark and try to wait another month or more as they improve with age. In Morocco I met a women who proudly showed me her syrupy seven-year old specimens. (Not that I’m recommending that here.) Fish out a lemon with a clean utensil, give it a rinse, cut away the flesh as it will be too salty and dice the translucent rind.

Marmalade:

Pick up a Riverford Kit, some jars and granulated sugar and you’re away. Bitter oranges are inedible raw, but deliciously bittersweet when transformed into marmalade. They originated in China and later became popular in the Arabian empire, through which they spread around the Middle East and Mediterranean, as far as Spain, which remains a main production area.

There are different methods for making marmalade, but all have several things in common. First, the rind is boiled before it’s cooked with sugar, since the quantity of sugar involved will stop it softening. So make sure the rind is tender enough to easily penetrate with the tines of a fork before proceeding. Second, the all-important pectin is in mostly found in the pith and pips, so these are retained and used to impart their setting power, although strained out so as not to cloud the jelly. Third, all the sugar must be gently dissolved before you boil, since stray grains on the side of the pan can cause a whole jar to crystalise. Nothing wrong with crunchy jam, but perhaps not what you were after. For a darker, richer ‘Oxford style’ marmalade, stir in a couple of tablespoons of black treacle.

You need a big pan so the marmalade has space to boil furiously to reach setting point, which happens at around 104C. Jam thermometers are not perfectly accurate, so better to use the cold saucer test – see my preserving guidelines for details. Watch as the steam dies down and the bubbles seem slower and less watery – signs you should be testing. It could take as little as 15 minutes or as much as 50. When ready give it a few minutes so the rind disperses before pouring into jars, or they will be top-heavy with rind. If there is scum, gently fold it in, skim it off with a spoon or dissolve it by stirring in a knob of butter. For those so inclined, now is the time to add a dash of whisky.

Of course, there’s no need to limit your marmalade to your breakfast toast. It’s great in bread and butter pudding, on steamed puddings and cakes, as a glaze for meats (ham, chicken, duck), in ice cream, and even in cocktails (marmalade whisky sour, anyone?).

Look out for our next preserving kit for clementine jam, which is probably my new favourite citrus preserve as it’s so ridiculously easy to make and retains so much of the raw clementines’ bright colour and flavour. I promise you’ll love it.

Whether you’re an experienced or novice preserver, please let me know how it goes, ask me any questions and share your own tips by commenting on this blog below, writing on our Facebook page or sending a tweet to @Riverford with the hashtag #cooksquestion.

Oranges bring a bright, zingy contrast to all the glorious roots and greens of winter, so the Spanish and Italian citrus seasons are well-timed. By importing via road and ferry, the carbon footprint of these crops is a fraction of their airfreighted equivalents. Oranges thrive in the extreme south of Europe but they need cool nights to develop their colour and sweetness, meaning they are a winter fruit. January brings two special arrivals:

blood oranges

Riverford’s blood oranges are grown by a co-operative of small-scale family farms located in and around the foothills of Mount Etna in Sicily. There is a lot of skill involved in growing blood oranges, as so many factors can affect the colouration of its vibrant crimson-streaked flesh. Soil pH and crop variety play a part, but the most important influence is low temperatures during the night. It takes years of experience for the farmers to know when the crop is ready, at which point it is hand harvested using a rolling platform, where the pickers put the fruit straight into baskets and then out to Riverford via their co-op packhouse. Blood oranges are of course wonderful enjoyed as they are, but their balance of sweetness and acidity make them a good addition to winter salads. And considering that blood oranges contain up to three times the amount of Vitamin C compared to most standard oranges, they are timely for fending off those winter colds!

Seville oranges

Teresa Amodora and her two daughters have been growing Seville oranges on Ave Maria Farm near Seville since 1986. You can’t get much more organic than their groves, and the fruit has the classic aromatic zest and tart flesh that are much sought after by marmalade makers. They will be available as a marmalade ‘kit’ along with unwaxed, organic lemons and our much-loved recipe throughout January and February (you’ll need your own sugar and jars). Once made, don’t limit its use to toast; we’ve a super Seville orange marmalade pudding recipe on our website, or alternatively use it for a cracking duck a l’orange.

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The Spanish citrus season kicked off in November and runs right through until May. You’ll notice the flavour of the fruit changing as the weeks go by, as different varieties come and go. Right now is the peak time for these bright, zesty beauties. Most of our oranges, lemons, clementines and satsumas come from a small group of farmers working in the hills behind Almeria in Spain. The group is headed up by Ginés Garcia, who is fiercely proud of his farm and the biodiversity it supports. He’s even inspired other farmers in the area to join up and convert to organic.

Now is also the time to grab blood oranges while they’re around – the flavour is wonderful but the season is short. Ours are grown in the foothills of Mount Etna in Sicily and the depth of their colour depends on light, temperature and variety. Try them in Jane’s vibrant lemon and orange tart, or squeezed into some chilled Prosecco for a seasonal cocktail.

make your own marmalade

Last January Guy took a trip to Ave Maria Farm near Seville, where 75 year old Amadora and her two daughters have been growing Seville oranges organically since 1986. Guy reckons you can’t get much more organic than their beautiful orchards and is convinced that the resulting bitter-flavoured fruit makes the very best marmalade he has tasted. Sevilles are at their best between mid-January and mid-February, so dig out some jars and muslin sharpish.
Try our marmalade kit £4.49. It contains 1.5kg of Amadora’s Seville oranges, two lemons and Jane’s marmalade recipe. You’ll need your own sugar and jars.